Schoolteacher Arrested in JonBenet Ramsey Case

By JAMES BARRON; Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

Published: August 17, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

An American identified as a schoolteacher was arrested in Bangkok yesterday in the death of JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old beauty pageant princess who was found strangled in her home on Dec. 26, 1996.

The district attorney in Boulder, Colo., where the Ramseys lived when JonBenet's body was found, said the arrest yesterday came after ''several months of a focused and complex investigation.''

The district attorney, Mary Lacy, added in a three-paragraph statement on the Boulder County Web site that JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, had been consulted during the investigation and that the family had been told of the arrest.

Mrs. Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in June. Mr. Ramsey said in a statement that they had been notified before Mrs. Ramsey's death that an arrest was close. ''Had she lived to see this day,'' he said, she ''would no doubt have been as pleased as I am.''

Ms. Lacy's statement provided no details about what had led investigators to the suspect or why, if they had been on his trail for some time, they swooped down on him yesterday. Nor did she spell out what charges he would face, and it was not clear how soon he would be returned to this country. Ms. Lacy's statement said she would not comment further until a news conference this morning, and calls to her office were not returned.

The suspect was identified by a law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly, as John M. Karr. The Associated Press quoted a lawyer who represented the Ramseys in the 1990's as saying Mr. Karr had lived in Conyers, Ga. The Ramseys lived in an Atlanta suburb, Dunwoody, about 30 miles away, before they moved to Colorado.

The Associated Press initially reported that Mr. Karr, 42, was already in custody in Bangkok on an unrelated sex charge when he was arrested in the Ramsey case. Later The A.P. quoted Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul, the head of Thailand's immigration police, as saying he was unaware of any criminal charges against Mr. Karr in Thailand. The A.P. quoted another Thai official as saying Mr. Karr had denied committing a crime at home.

The arrest put a fresh spotlight on a case that once dominated newspaper headlines, television newscasts and supermarket tabloids. For years, as investigators followed hundreds of leads but seemingly made little headway, John and Patsy Ramsey lived under what Ms. Lacy's predecessor once called ''the umbrella of suspicion.''

The Ramseys repeatedly denied any involvement in their daughter's death, on Christmas night in 1996, even as one detective who had worked on the case speculated that Mrs. Ramsey had struck JonBenet by accident and then wrote a ransom note to deflect attention.

The Ramseys' lawyer, L. Lin Wood, would not say whether the Ramseys had known Mr. Karr, The A.P. reported. It was not immediately clear when investigators began focusing on Mr. Karr as a potential suspect in a widely talked about case that some commentators had compared to the kidnapping and killing of the Lindbergh baby in 1932.

Dan Boyd, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, said his agency's attach?n Bangkok had assisted officers from the Boulder district attorney's office and the Royal Thai Police in identifying and arresting Mr. Karr.

A federal official involved in the investigation said that a hearing in Bangkok today could give the authorities access to Mr. Karr's computer. The official said the authorities had been looking at him in connection with a child pornography investigation. The official also said he expected that Mr. Karr would be returned to this country quickly, though it was not clear how soon.

JonBenet was garroted with a paintbrush and a nylon cord. The police found a ransom note, 370 words written with a pen and paper from the Ramseys' house. In the note demanding $118,000 for JonBenet's return were details that only someone close to the Ramseys could have known -- the amount of Mr. Ramsey's annual bonus, for example.

The note, addressed to Mr. Ramsey, added, ''You are not the only fat cat around so don't think that killing will be difficult.''

Both of JonBenet's parents submitted handwriting samples for police scrutiny, and Mr. Ramsey was quickly eliminated as a suspect. Articles in Denver newspapers and Vanity Fair magazine said that the Colorado Bureau of Investigation believed that Mrs. Ramsey had written the note. But the investigators also believed that the evidence fell short of being definitive.

The Ramseys maintained their innocence, though they refused to talk to the police for months after JonBenet's body was found, instead hiring lawyers, private investigators, handwriting analysts and publicists.

''I did not kill my daughter, JonBenet,'' John Ramsey declared in 1997. His wife, sitting next to him as television cameras zoomed in on them, said: ''I did not have anything to do with it. I loved that child with the whole of my heart and soul.''

The police in Boulder faced criticism for appearing to bungle the early stages of the investigation. The Ramseys first called the police to say JonBenet had been kidnapped. Hours later, a detective let Mr. Ramsey go inside without accompanying him. He soon checked a windowless room in the basement where Christmas gifts had been stored, and emerged carrying JonBenet's body.

The detective also allowed 10 other people into the house, fueling complaints that the crime scene had been contaminated.

The case dragged on, with rank-and-file officers taking a no-confidence vote on the police chief at the time. He and a detective assigned to the case later resigned. The district attorney at the time, Alexander M. Hunter, did not seek re-election in 2000. That was two years after the mayor of Boulder, Bob Greenlee, demanded an investigation into charges by another detective that the district attorney's office had ''effectively crippled'' the investigation.

That was also two years after the case had gone to a grand jury. But Mr. Hunter dismissed the panel 13 months later. It did not hand up indictments, and he was unapologetic.

The Ramseys eventually released the results of polygraph tests. The expert who administered the tests said the polygraph did not register deception. The Ramseys maintained in a book, ''Death of Innocence,'' that the slaying had been the work of an intruder. In 2003, a federal judge in Atlanta reached the same conclusion in dismissing a lawsuit against the Ramseys. Ms. Lacy later released a statement saying she concurred with the ruling.

Photos: John M. Karr was arrested yesterday in the investigation of the death of JonBenet Ramsey, 6, who was killed in Boulder, Colo., in 1996. (Photo courtesy of Wex Karr, via Atlanta Journal-Constitution)(pg. A23)

Correction: August 18, 2006, Friday
A front-page article yesterday about an arrest in Thailand in the death of JonBenet Ramsey misstated the given name of a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement who said his agency's attaché in Bangkok assisted in the case. He is Dean Boyd, not Dan Boyd.